LITR 4232: American Renaissance
Sample Answers from Student Midterms, Spring 2001

A copy of the Spring 2001 midterm is reproduced below. Under each question is a link that will take you to answers (complete or partial) to that question. All the answers posted here are good or at least interesting answers. Some minor stylistic errors may be present, given that the exam was written under time constraints (80 minutes).

Authors of passages are indexed by initials (e. g., [LQ 2001] to a list of students from the spring 2001 course offering. Students preferring to make anonymous contributions to this webpage are indexed by "Anonymous [+ a color] 2001" in order to respect their anonymity while preserving a record of their contributions.

 

LITR 4232: American Renaissance--Midterm Exam, Spring 2001

1 March 2001

Format: open-book and open-notebook

Time: The exam should take at least an hour to complete, but you may use the time of the entire class period (1 hour and 20 minutes).

Special instructions for in-class students:

Special instructions for email students:

You will receive the exam by email (and it will be posted to the webpage) around 9am. It must be returned by noon. Within that three-hour span you may spend a total of 80 minutes writing the exam. Keep a log as you start and stop. Breaks or pauses are OK.

Where to write your answers? Overall my attitude is for you to work things out as best you can under the circumstances. For the "Identify and Signify" section, if you can't write in the spaces provided, just provide identification for which question you're answering and write your answers in the same file as your essay.

Send your answers to me at whitec@uhcl.edu. Attach your file to the message and paste the contents into the email.

I will acknowledge receipt of your emailed exam within a few hours. If you do not receive an acknowledgement from me within 24 hours, you should be concerned. Call me at 281 283 3380.

If you have mechanical trouble returning your exam to me, try the following

Check the email address to me. Make sure it's for whitec and not just white.

Ask for help from a tech or a techie friend.

Call me at 281 283 3380. If I don't answer, leave a voice message explaining your situation. Something will work out.

Questions 

Part 1. "Identify and signify."

Answer 2 of the following 3 passages.

In-class students: Write your answers in the spaces provided on the question sheet; if more space is needed (as it probably should be), continue on backs of test sheets with numbers and arrows to identify.

Email students: Indicate which quotation you’re answering by heading your answer with its number.

Instructions from syllabus: In the case of quoted passages, first you will "identify" the passage by author, title, and context in the work from which the passage is taken. Second, you will "signify"—that is, highlight and discuss themes, ideas, and style features of the passage in relation to course lectures and discussions. [Comparisons and contrasts to other texts are welcome.]

Additional note: There are many more themes in these passages than we had time to cover in class. Therefore, while you’re expected to know what we said about such passages, you’re not expected simply to repeat but to find exciting new possibilities, which are always there.

 

Passages from readings

Passage #1.

Of all its banners, none has been more steadily upheld, and under none have more valor and willingness for real sacrifices been shown, than that of the champions of the enslaved African. And this band it is, which, partly from a natural following out of principles, partly because many women have been prominent in that cause, makes, just now, the warmest appeal in behalf of Woman.

Though there has been a growing liberality on this subject, yet society at large is not so prepared for the demands of this party, but that they are and will be for some time, coldly regarded as the Jacobins [radicals] of their day.

"Is it not enough," cries the irritated trader, "that you have done all you could to break up the national union, and thus destroy the prosperity of our country, but now you must be trying to break up family union . . . ."

 

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Passage #2.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. . . . The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are truly adjusted; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. . . . Not the sun of summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. . . . Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.

 

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Passage #3.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison . . . .

When I came out of prison,--for some one interfered, and paid the tax,-- . . . a change had to my eyes come over the scene,--the town, and State, and country,--greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. . . .

My neighbors first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour,--for the horse was soon tackled [harnessed], I was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

 

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Essay section

Formal / literary option

Proposition: The American Renaissance inherits literary paradigms of Romanticism and the romance narrative primarily from European literature and culture but adapts these forms to American conditions.

Assignment: Explore the ideas inherent in this proposition, suggesting how "American" Romanticism and romance may differ from the "European" versions, and how the American versions may differ from each other.

Describe how at least two "classic" authors exemplify the conventions of European Romanticism and romance even as they adapt these conventions to the American landscape, its characters, and its changing social realities.

Then describe how at least two "representative" authors also used Romanticism and the romance but again adapted forms to their own situations. How do their uses of Romanticism and romance both transcend their situations and reveal its confining reality?

For "classic" authors, consider Irving, Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau.

For "representative" authors, consider Apess, Quinney, Truth, Fuller, Stanton, Douglass, Jacobs, and Stowe.

Compare and contrast authors and texts with each other. (That is, don't treat these texts in isolation from each other.)

"Convention" in the usage above means a standard, a tradition, element, custom, or motif.

 

Click Here for Sample Answers to Literary / Formal Option from Student Midterms

 

Cultural / historical option

In the Declaration of Independence announcing the formation of the United States of America in 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal . . . ."

In the Gettysburg Address in 1863, President Lincoln stated that the Civil War was being fought to complete the nation’s "unfinished work."

Between these two proclamations came the literary and cultural movement known as the American Renaissance. Citing at least 3 sources from the literature of this period, describe how authors, texts, or characters within texts challenge the USA to live up to the Declaration’s promise of equality.

Develop your commentary on this cultural or historical situation and the literary responses to it with literary concepts like voice, literacy, and strategies authors used to make audiences identify (and thus grant equality to) those they might otherwise consider unequal.

Click Here for Sample Answers to Cultural / Historical Option from Student Midterms